


Things Soul Will Never Admit To

by RemotelyInteresting (WiseNerd)



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), But Mostly Comfort, Canon - Anime, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of PSTD, Nightmares, the only one doing the hurt is me really, theyre like maybe highschool seniors
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:40:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27166039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WiseNerd/pseuds/RemotelyInteresting
Summary: Maka has recurring nightmares. As does Soul. The worst nightmares are the ones with their partner in them.
Relationships: Maka Albarn/Soul Eater Evans
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37





	Things Soul Will Never Admit To

**Author's Note:**

> When I was a kid I heavily related to Maka and tried to take on her characteristics, now I project my characteristics on her. This is all to say this is really self-indulgent.

Maka has three recurring nightmares. The first is always at school, the situation and the people change occasionally, but the feeling of her heart dropping to the floor doesn’t. 

She’s taking a test, that’s also a project that she had a month to do, that’s also a research paper. It’s the biggest grade of her life. It will determine if there’s any worth to her life at all. She’s handing it to Dr. Stein, Ms. Marie, Coach Syd, Lord Death. She doesn’t remember anything about the test/project/paper. She thinks she spent time on it, she becomes less sure of that by the second. The second the paper is in the hands of the teacher; she realizes she didn’t do anything. It’s blank. She never studied. She never wrote anything down. She had just stared at a blank sheet at her desk for hours. Panic sweeps through her and tears are in her eyes and she grabs for the paper, yelling, screaming, crying. All she can hear is blood roaring in her ears and her cheeks. Shame and embarrassment crawl under her skin and stick there like black blood. The teacher just looks disappointed. No, not just disappointed, hateful. They hate her. They hate her nerdy, goody-two-shoes, perfect student persona was a sham this whole time. Her heart sinks, shrinks, shatters. The black blood swallows her. 

The second nightmare is shorter and vaguer. She failed a mission somehow. Soul wasn’t supposed to come or isn’t there, or never existed. The blame goes fully on her is the point. She is so afraid as she has to enter Lord Death’s room and give her report of the mission. Her heart is in her throat in this nightmare. She’s choking on it. As she chokes, the report is given somehow. At the end of it, she looks up and the face always changes, sometimes it’s even her father’s face, but the expression is more or less the same. Full of anger, looking at her like she’s an idiot, like they always expected her to fail, but they are still disappointed. She’s expelled or transferred down to the NOT class, sometimes she’s kicked out of the city and chokes on her tears in the desert.   
The third nightmare is the worst though, and it’s the one she’s having right now. She’s fighting Medusa, who has that awful screaming sword, Ragnorak. Not Ragnorak as she knows him now, but as he was, huge, awful, and piercing in more ways than one. There are snakes coming from every direction as she tries to dodge Ragnorak. Soul is yelling at her, she’s not listening. Medusa swings wildly, the look of murder and madness terrifies Maka but she’s learned to fight while terrified. There’s an opening. Maka swings. Too late, she realizes, she’s left herself open. Ragnorak stabs right at her center. She never feels the hit. It’s always Soul that does. She screams his name and falls to the ground with him. His expression is what makes this nightmare the worst. It’s full of hatred, for her. He hates her. He hates that he has to protect her. He hates that he’s dying right now because of her. 

“I always hated being your weapon.” He coughs out, black blood dribbling down his chin. 

The black blood reaches for her, this time she is stabbed through her center, and she wakes up, mid-sob. 

Maka’s heart is still racing and in the dim of the room, she raises her hand in front of her dark window, where the tiniest bit of streetlight shows that she’s shaking worse than a leaf in a windstorm. She takes a deep breath and gets up, purposely not looking at her clock. She really doesn’t want to know how late, or early, it is. At best, it will take her half an hour to get back to bed and that’s only if she doesn’t think about time, or sleep, or that nightmare. And if she gets a cup of chamomile tea. 

Most of her brain is still asleep, the small part that’s not is fighting to keep from replaying any part of the nightmare she just woke up from. The images still flit by. Maka tries to focus on her breathing instead, or anything else, she’ll psychoanalyze her issues in the morning.

She forgets briefly about both when she sees the kitchen night light is on. The kitchen light is way too bright, especially in the middle of the night, so after Soul complained enough times Maka stuck a push light under the cabinet at the kitchen entrance. Maka finds Soul right next to it when she enters the kitchen. He looks like hell, face pale, eyebags on full display, and has a thousand-yard stare going on until he notices Maka in front of him. She probably doesn’t look much better but as his gaze focuses on her Maka sees his shoulders relax a bit and his expression goes from haunted to tired. The same thing happens to her, though she doesn’t know it. 

This is the nth time this has happened, for both of them. Though this is the first time they ended up in the kitchen at the same time.   
The Academy, for all its grandeur, doesn’t offer much help with PTSD and other fun mental health issues it gives a good portion of its students. Sure, they give a million and one lessons on how to avoid madness but that’s really only because students aren’t useful once they’ve gone mad. Soul and Maka, and plenty others, are all proof the school needs that PTSD doesn’t mean you can’t function (as long as you also ignore all the students that dropped out or died fighting because of it, and the school loved nothing more than to ignore large problems). 

Maka and Soul have had that conversation before, plenty of times, but neither of them is thinking about it now. Really, they both barely thinking. Maybe that’s why Maka goes in for a hug without saying a word, wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her face into his chest. Soul is too tired to be surprised and he’ll never admit it, but he could use a hug right then as well. He just hugs back and drops his head to rest on the top of hers. It’s a firm hug, not too tight or loose. Just strong, a reminder that they are both alive and they have each other. If Maka wasn’t so tired, she’d cry as relief finally sweeps over her. Her hands are still shaking as she grips the back of Soul’s shirt. Soul hugs her the tiniest bit tighter in response. 

They hold each other like that until the sound of boiling water in a kettle stirs them apart. Unsure of how apart they should be now, what to do with their hands, or where to look. The atmosphere goes slightly awkward as atmospheres tend to do once an emotionally intimate moment ends. For all the grace the pair has on the battlefield, it certainly doesn’t transfer to moments like this. 

“Uh, I, uh,” Soul mumbles, “Started the kettle for tea.”

Maka blinks and then nods absently. “Chamomile tea?” She asks as she heads to the cabinet with the mugs. 

“I, uh, yeah.” Soul just stands unsure what to do as Maka busies herself with getting them both tea. 

He ends up staring into the distance as his nightmare comes back to him. It was the one where he at school, just in class, Maka next to him. He’s actually bothering to take some notes, Maka probably stabbing him with her pencil every time she sees him slacking. He turns a page, the edge every so slightly cuts his thumb. His heart starts racing there. Black blood oozes out. He tries to hide it. Swipes it off on his pants. The blood instead spreads and begins to cover up his thigh. The cut on his thumb opens, slowly to more ridiculous proportions. A chasm of black blood split it open, then his hand. The blood on his pants wraps his legs together just as he gets up, in hopes of running, and falls back into his seat. Horror takes hold as Maka turns over now, a sharp look transforming into pure fear. She reaches out to Soul. He yells, trying to wriggle away like a worm. The black blood stabs out at Maka. Stabbing through her hand clean, then her leg, her arm. The blood erupts into a wave of needles, stabbing through every bit of Maka. She’s stuck, frozen, the same expression of pure fear still on her face. Then the expression melts to nothing, she coughs red, her eyes dull. Chaos erupts as Soul screams. His friends and teachers trying to get to him and ending up the same as Maka. The blood swallows him. He’s crying. He’s laughing. He’s choking on the black. He wakes up gasping. 

Soul looks like he did when Maka entered the kitchen as she holds out his cup towards him, one spoonful of honey as he likes it. 

“You wanna talk about it?” She asks carefully, trying to get his gaze to meet hers rather than go right through it. 

He startles out of his train of thought, blinks, and thinks about the question as he finally takes the cup. 

“Not really,” Soul answers, grimacing and finally looking at Maka. 

Maka gives a small, tired, understanding smile back. Soul is a bit thrown off by it. She’s so much… softer right now. He knows Maka isn’t actually all nagging and smart retorts, but it’s one thing to know it and another to see it. He has seen this side maybe a handful of times before, even after years of being her weapon. It always throws him for a bit of a loop. 

He’s staring, he realizes too late but Maka doesn’t seem to notice. Actually, she just assumed Soul went back to staring off into space. 

“C’mon, let’s go sit down, have our tea, and then go back to bed,” Maka says after a beat, a trace of her typical nagging tone coming through. 

On instinct, Soul rolls his eyes in response, but Maka is already heading to the couch and he's following after her. 

There’s a lot of things Soul will refuse to admit to. If he actually a majority, if not all, of these things pertain to Maka. One of them is that he likes that when they’re on the couch, they naturally gravitate toward one another. When Maka sits down in the middle he picks a side of the couch and she leans on him. They drink in calm silence. Well, he stares at his tea and breathes in the aroma more than drinks it whereas Maka almost gulps it down. By the time Soul actually finishes his tea he finds Maka passed out on his shoulder. He smiles softly, another thing he’ll never admit to, takes the empty mug out of Maka’s hand and puts it down on the coffee table. When that doesn’t wake her, he takes it as a good sign that she’s really passed out and picks her up, taking her back to her bed.   
Maka is actually half-asleep, only half-aware of everything but she is aware of when she’s placed in her bed and Soul’s warmth leaves her. She reaches for him and mumbles his name, catching his sleeve and pulling.   
There is one thing, above all else, that Soul will absolutely never admit. It’s that, when Maka catches his sleeve, his heart melts and flutters simultaneously in a way he’s never felt before. It must be madness from the black blood, Soul tells himself later, remembering his response. 

“It’s okay, Maka. I’m here.” Soul says reaching down so she can hear his whisper and moving to hold her hand in his. 

Softly, he presses a kiss to the back of her hand, pulls away, and goes back to bed, falling asleep immediately. All nightmares forgotten.

**Author's Note:**

> I might continue this? Maybe? This is the first time in years I've written fanfic, please be kind.


End file.
